Large Scale Battles


#1

Anyone have any tips, tricks and/or advice for running large scale sieges/battles? I’m eager to incorporate a siege or large fight into one of my campaigns, I’m just not sure how to approach it.


#2

Chunks. Archers are a chunk, cavalry are a chunk, foot soldiers are a chunk, etc.


#3

Focus on the PCs inside of the mass battle and zone in on their small combat with the illusion of mass combat all around. You could also roll percentile dice to see how many forces on each side die every round.


#4

I’ve been thinking about this a bit myself. My current idea is to layout a grid where I can place index cards. Each gird square gets a card showing what soldiers are in it. So one might have a small number of both sides, all one side, a lot of both, and so on. Then, anyone important (players, named NPCs, villians, etc.) gets a model, and moves about on this board just like you would any other room. This also keeps the board clear of hundreds of mook models that are not the focus of the action.

People with figures have movement hampered by the density of enemies in an area (season movement rules to taste), they can fight in a grid area and try to reduce the enemies in that area, drop an AOE to clear a grid section, or whatever else your players want to try.


#5

Lots of good ideas up above. The only thing I would add is don’t over complicate your battle field, keep the mechanics simple. For example: give siege weapons a d6, d8, or d12 Damage Effort but count the dice roll as the number of soldiers killed when it hits.


#6

I was thinking exactly this the other day, my idea was to have each UNIT represented by a Index card with its own simplified character sheet/card and the Player characters with a model that joins a UNIT to lead into battle giving that particular UNIT bonus’s.


#7

Each set of units is a CHUNK. Cavalry, archers, etc. You can further divide these into elven archers, dwarven infantry. And further by type and experience. Heavy, veteran, seasoned, light, etc.

Each unit represents 50-150 or more creatures of that type. Or, less if it is like ogres or armored trolls or a siege engine set.

Each unit should have something it does. Infantry might prevent archers from being attacked by enemy infantry while they’re alive. Archers can attack infantry and other archers or flying creatures. Cavalry could do extra damage or attack more than one unit in a line when they Charge. Etc.

Then just give them a heart, each point represents 10% of the entire unit’s health AND MORALE. When they get low maybe make a morale check to see if they break rank.

Make sure your players are doing cool shit while the fighting goes on. Or, if it’s their army, let them command a unit on their turn.